Here are the other pics with zero post processing. Out of the camera JPEGS. My bad. I should have posted them this way to begin way. Apologies to all.

The more time you spend building photographic and artistic skills, the less time you will spend post processing and fiddling with your images.

Excessive post-processing is just an attempt to make bland images come to life - over saturation, extreme black and white conversions, sepia tone, film simulations, fake cross-processing, glowing HDR, vignetting, excessive sharpening - basically anything you see on instagram. It's taking a tool out of the photographer's toolbox (all of the above have their uses), and then cranking up the dial to 11, even though the image doesn't need it. What the image usually does need is a better composition, better subject, better lighting, etc.

While the second batch of pictures is less "exciting" in that sense, they are better photos. Hint: noise reduction almost always reduces image quality - I have my X100s set at -2, and I don't add any in post processing.

The main thing I would work on if I were you is stepping back just a bit to get everything in the frame, so you can crop and adjust the composition later. The tree, and two of the shots of the boy, both could use a little more room around the edges. You can always crop later, but you can't "un-crop" something.

thanks for the advice. I agree, the photographic skills are the most important.